This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention - by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly checksum new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact. Early in the quarter, the Lie of the Day was usually obvious - immediately triggering a forest of raised hands to challenge the falsehood. Dr. K would smile, draw a line through that section of the board, and utter his trademark phrase "Very good! In fact, the opposite is true. Moving on ... "

As the quarter progressed, the Lie of the Day became more subtle, and many ended up slipping past a majority of the students unnoticed until a particularly alert person stopped the lecture to flag the disinformation. Every once in a while, a lecture would end with nobody catching the lie which created its own unique classroom experience - in any other college lecture, end of the class hour prompts a swift rush of feet and zipping up of bookbags as students make a beeline for the door; on the days when nobody caught the lie, we all sat in silence, looking at each other as Dr. K, looking quite pleased with himself, said with a sly grin: "Ah ha! Each of you has one falsehood in your lecture notes. Discuss amongst yourselves what it might be, and I will tell you next Monday. That is all." Those lectures forced us to puzzle things out, work out various angles in study groups so we could approach him with our theories the following week.

A new cd with various bonus tracks was recently released to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Thriller. I had no idea that the "core of Thriller's music was executed by members of Toto" (link), or that the "uncredited guitarist who whipped out the fluttering, squealing solo on [Beat It] was Eddie Van Halen, whose extracurriculars ranked among the provocations for singer David Lee Roth's 1985 departure from the megalithic rock band Van Halen" (link).

The current issue of Natural History magazine had some interesting information: even when great ice sheets blanketed much of North America, the climate in Southern California (except for snowcapped mountain peaks) can best be described as Mediterranean.

Even during the Ice Age, Southern California looked something like this:

And named the Starburys as the winner. They also compared the Pleo ($350) and the WowWee Robosapien V2 ($140), the Krups XP7230 Fully Automatic Espresso Machine ($1,250) and the Bialetti Moka Express ($25), and the Braun Pulsonic ($270) and the Gillette Fusion Power ($13).

Six sophomores were expelled and more than a dozen other students faced suspensions Tuesday in a cheating scandal that has rocked Harvard-Westlake, a top-tier Los Angeles private school with a national reputation for its academics.

Administrators said students conspired to steal Spanish and history tests by distracting teachers in their classrooms. The tests were then shown to several other students before midterm exams last month, said Harvard-Westlake President Thomas Hudnut.

keeping thousands of seriously ill patients in ambulance 'holding patterns' outside accident and emergency units to meet a government pledge that all patients are treated within four hours of admission.

Those affected by 'patient stacking' include people with broken limbs or those suffering fits or breathing problems. An Observer investigation has also found that some wait for up to five hours in ambulances because A&E units have refused to admit them until they can guarantee to treat them within the time limit. Apart from the danger posed to patients, the detaining of ambulances means vehicles and trained crew are not available to answer new 999 calls because they are being kept on hospital sites.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Microsoft is so lame. There's lengthy "bios" for the characters here, plus games and episodes (which I did not try out). They're not going to be easy to acquire, although I doubt there's many that really care.